Intel Rapid Start in Linux

Kernel developer Matthew Garrett has submitted a patch for enabling the innovative Intel Rapid Start Technology (IRST) with the Linux kernel. Intel's stated goal for IRST is to bring a system back from sleep mode in six seconds or less.

According to Garrett, although the IRST documentation implies that the technology is tied to the motherboard and the CPU, "...as far as I can tell, it is entirely implemented firmware and could just as well on, say, a Cyrix on a circa-1996 motherboard if someone wrote the BIOS code."
Implementing IRST as a kernel patch is only part of the story. As Garrett points out, "There's still the remaining question of how userspace should make use of these [changes], and also how installers should behave when it comes to systems that support IRST."Pending objections from the development community, the kernel patch, which adds an interface for setting the necessary IRST values, is targeted for the upcoming Linux kernel 3.11 revision.